


buried somewhere deep

by ceruleancats



Series: we will always end up here [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Archivist Sasha James, Archivist!Sasha, Drowning, Gen, Power Swap, buried!martin, canon-typical martin's mom sucks, very bad parenting and probably what qualifies as emotional abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24973351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceruleancats/pseuds/ceruleancats
Summary: Head Archivist Sasha James pays a visit to the flat of a man who makes very good tea and hears his story.
Series: we will always end up here [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807591
Comments: 12
Kudos: 88





	buried somewhere deep

**Author's Note:**

> This is a standalone part of what is hopefully going to be a larger Archivist!Sasha AU. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think!! 
> 
> (Statements are like. kinda hard ngl. Mad respect for Jonny Sims for writing like 200 of them.)

The address Daisy tracked down for her leads Sasha to a small, ancient-looking flat on the far side of the city. There’s a welcome mat on the stoop, slightly battered, and, upon closer inspection, crusted with dried mud or possibly sand. Sasha steps onto the mat to give the door two sharp raps. She only has to wait a few seconds before she hears the sound of approaching footsteps, and the door creaks open to reveal a large, tall man wearing a cozy-looking knit jumper and a friendly smile. 

“Hello!” the man says cheerfully.

“Hi,” Sasha says, “Sasha James from the Magnus Institute. Would you be willing to give me a short statement?”

The man’s smile dims somewhat at the mention of the Institute, which is not a great sign, but he nods and tells her, “Please, come in.”

Sasha follows him through the entranceway and into the flat. It’s strangely humid inside, and somehow even more cramped than it looked from the outside, with low ceilings and even lower doorframes that the man has to duck under to lead her into a combined kitchen/dining room. It seems very inconvenient for a man this large to be living in a flat this small, but he navigates it with an easy grace, and pulls out one of the two chairs around a tiny round table covered in clutter. 

“Sorry about the mess. I don’t have many visitors,” he says, sounding a bit embarrassed, as he scoops up a haphazard stack of what appears to be unopened bills from the table and deposits it on an equally messy coffee table in the adjoining room. 

“Oh, no worries,” Sasha says quickly. If this is the right address, and Daisy assured her it was, this man is far more dangerous than he appears, and Sasha needs to stay as polite and inoffensive as possible. 

The man finishes clearing the table and gestures for Sasha to take a seat, which she does with a smile and a “thank you.” 

“Would you like some tea?” he asks hopefully after she’s set her bag on the floor next to her.

“Yes, please.” Hopefully he won’t poison her, but that’s a risk she’ll have to take in the name of etiquette. 

He breaks into another blinding smile, bustles into the kitchen part of the room, and begins the clearly familiar ritual of making tea. 

“So,” he says over his shoulder as he fills the kettle, “what brings the Archivist all the way out to this side of London?”

“Ah, just some...information gathering.” Which is technically true. No point in getting into too much detail about the brutal murder by goddamn metal pipe of the most trustworthy and knowledgeable source of supernatural information she’d found since starting this job, which is the real reason she has to track down a bunch of avatars who might or might not be in the mood to kill her in hopes of a crumb or two of useful info. Also, he knows who she is. Sasha isn’t sure if she should be scared or cheered by that fact. Well, he hasn't murdered her yet, so that's something.

“Right, I probably should have guessed that.” He turns back around to get the water boiling, and then interrupts himself with an “Oh!” of realization. “I’ve been a terrible host and haven’t even introduced myself! My name is Martin, Martin Blackwood.”

“Nice to meet you, Martin,” Sasha returns politely.

While he finishes the tea, they chat a bit about the weather and how cold it’s been lately. Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, Sasha realizes there aren’t actually any windows in the flat, at least that she can see. Huh. Maybe that explains the humidity?

“All right, here you are,” Martin says, setting a steaming mug of tea down in front of her and settling into the other chair. He didn’t ask her if she wanted any cream or sugar, which she usually likes a bit of, but when she takes a tentative sip the tea tastes amazing without either. 

“This is really good!” Sasha says, and takes another sip before reaching down to pull out the tape recorder from her bag. She places it on the table face up between them. “Recording okay?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” he says, and Sasha nods and presses the record button. 

“Statement of Martin Blackwood, regarding…?”

“A strange experience at the coast.”

“Statement recorded direct from subject, April 18th, 2017.”

The tape recorder whirs softly for a second in the silence, before Martin takes a deep, heaving breath and begins. 

“Growing up, I was always under a lot of...pressure. My mother was sick, and my dad left when I was young, so it fell to me to take care of her. It can’t have been easy for her, relying on an irresponsible teenager for food and medicine and errands and income, but we didn’t really have a choice, because by the time I was fifteen or so, her condition had deteriorated to the point where it was impossible for her to work or pretty much even leave the house. I think it made her, well, sort of bitter, I guess? To have to depend on someone else for everything. I’m not sure, exactly. She just...tended to take it out on me, because there was no one else around.

“Also, like I said, she couldn't work. So that meant it was up to me to provide all the income. I've never been the smallest guy, so thankfully I could pass for eighteen pretty well. Don’t tell, but I may have done a little fudging of my CV — I mean, who’s really going to hire a fifteen year old with no work experience? I dropped out of school so I had time to work multiple jobs, but even then it was so, so hard to make ends meet. Between the double shifts that left me pulling regular all-nighters, and my mum’s condition, and her high standards for everything, and the bills that piled up and up and up—I guess you could say that after almost ten years of that, I was almost drowning in hopelessness and helplessness.

“It was just a normal day when it finally happened. Straw that broke the camel’s back, or something. I was making scrambled eggs for Mum for breakfast, and she told me to get her a glass of water in the middle of it, and when I got back to the eggs, they were just slightly burned. And when I served them to her, she said, ‘Burned again? God, can’t you do anything right?’ And everything just went numb. I got up, grabbed my coat and wallet, and left the flat, ignoring the complaints increasing in volume from behind me. It was like I was in a dream. Nothing really felt real. I walked into the tube station and got on a random line and rode it in a daze all the way to the end, which happened to be the coast. It was raining when I left the station, but I walked down to the beach anyway, hair getting totally soaked, glasses fogging up terribly. Oh, and I had started crying by that point, too. I was totally miserable, basically. 

“I think it was some combination of the glasses and the dark, stormy sky and the rain, or maybe I was just too lost in my misery, but I missed all the warning signs for it. I mean, there must have been signs, right? Well, by the time I noticed, I was already in up to my knees. Quicksand. Yes, actual quicksand. I honestly thought it was just an adventure movie thing, but it does really exist in Britain. Naturally, I freaked out. I started thrashing my legs and trying get them out, screaming uselessly for help, because no one was at the beach in this kind of weather, twisting desperately around and stretching and reaching for the solid ground behind me, but it was slippery and muddy and slick with rain and I couldn’t get a grip, and I just kept sinking and sinking, thick, wet sand sucking and dragging at my waist, and then my chest, and then my arms. Then it was up to my chin, and I took one last breath and closed my eyes and just thought, ‘God, of course this is how it ends. Martin Blackwood, drowned in fucking quicksand because he was too stupid and sad to look where he was going.’ 

“And then I was under. It was so dark. Quiet, without the hiss of the rain and my cries for help and the disgusting wet sucking noises of my useless struggling. The sand was impossibly heavy, pressing in all around me, sliding into my nose and my ears and my eyes even though they were squeezed shut. I wanted to laugh, because it was so weirdly peaceful. This was the most peaceful I had ever felt in my short, miserable life, and I was about to die. But I’ve never been able to hold my breath for long, and the air ran out quick. My lungs were burning, and the sand kissed my closed lips like a greedy lover. And then suddenly there was a voice in my head, or maybe it was just the last thought of a dying man delirious from lack of air, but it said, ‘Embrace that which buries you.’ So I opened my mouth, and I did. 

“I woke up on the far side of the quicksand, near the waves. I don’t know how long I was out, but it was sunny when I opened my eyes and squinted through the sand crusted in my eyelashes. I coughed up a fair amount of what I assume was quicksand, but other than that I felt totally fine, if very sandy. At first I tried to convince myself that someone had saved me, dragged me out somehow, and I guess just left me there for some reason, but deep down I knew there was no rational explanation like that for what had happened. And when I first helped someone else embrace their burdens, too, everything clicked. I knew what I was meant to do, and it felt....right.”

Martin sighs in what sounds like absolute ecstasy, and Sasha surfaces from the daze of live statement-taking. Her cheeks feel oddly damp, and she realizes she must have cried at some point during the statement. She wipes the tears discreetly, but Martin notices anyway. 

“Oh,” he says gently, “I’m sorry I made you cry. I know you’re carrying some heavy burdens yourself. I think I could help you, if you want.”

“Ah,” Sasha says. “I appreciate the offer, but I think I’ll have to decline.” There are several statements in the Institute about the unfortunate souls “helped” by a man whose description matches Martin awfully well. 

The flat creaks ominously, and Sasha swears the ceiling spontaneously drops several centimeters, but Martin gives her a resigned smile. “I understand,” he says. “Just, sometimes, when you’re feeling helpless, the best way to find peace is to accept it. There’s strength in what comes after.” 

Sasha nods, and carefully presses the stop button on the recorder, sliding it back into her bag. “Thank you for the advice, and the tea. It was nice to meet you.”

Martin’s lips curl up. “Of course, you too,” he says, sticking out a hand for her to shake. His hand is warm and a little sticky, and when Sasha releases it, she can see grains of sand in the grooves of her palm. 

She grabs her recorder and bag, and he leads her back to the door, dodging clutter and ducking doorframes with the same athleticism as earlier. 

“Good luck,” he tells her when she steps outside. Before Sasha can thank him again, the door is closed and she’s alone on the welcome mat again. The air is cool and dry against her skin, and she lets out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. 

The sand doesn’t come off her hand for days.


End file.
